Sa Yuan Thong, Thong Lang, Luem and Sra Krasi, Thailand - Jan 08

So I'm crossing the airport carpark to fly to Thailand when I get run over by a car. I end up under a Merc with my foot squashed up under the cars wheel. Much swearing pursued. After relieving the idiot driver of all the money he had in his wallet, forcing him to carry my bags and getting him to buy me cake, I decided Id hobble bashed and bruised on the plane anyway and if I needed to go to hospital I would maybe try to find one in Phuket. - Not an auspicious start. Thankfully once swelling and pain subsided I could see only injury was a broken toe (nothing can be done to help that) so didnt bother with hospital and it didn't greatly hinder my trip.

Day one saw me limping around Tham Sa Yuan Thong with Ben Reymenants. This cave has a smallish flooded section we wanted to take a look at. Diving OC sidemount we had a mince around once Ben decided he would actually attach his wing to his harness before jumping in :-). Tham Sa Yuan Thong has the clearest water Ive seen so far in Thai caves (as can be seen from the pics) To get to the flooded part of the cave required a bit of a climb then a crawl. Next day we visited Sra Krasi. This flooded cave has two entrances we haven't explored before. The first came to a 35m deep narrow passageway heading off, the second was a fun filled mud hole with a very small tunnel at around 6m depth. Both passageways are going. After surfacing we were joined by Alex Fletcher (fellow CDG member from UK) who dispite his immense age :-) joined us to visit a nearby dry cave for a play. I ended up climbing up some of the bamboo poles used to collect birds nest...It was damn high....and it was one of those times when going down isnt as easy as going up

Next day me and Alex went to explore Tham Thong Lang. This is a large cave that we measured to be around 2.5Km long. from the enterance to the resurgence The first part has a waterfall and is flooded the rest a mixture of swimming or walking. Explored approx 1.5km on this day. Saw a small snake with a yellow stripe down its side slithering over the cave wall.

Next day me and Alex was joined by Ben and Dave and we went off to explore Tham Luem. This cave is unknown and unexplored. We found out about it by the land owner who was born there and spent his whole life there. He himself had explored the cave to an exit about 1km in, but he was keen for us to push it further and document. At his request real name of cave/area is not used (Luem = Python, Tham - Cave, so for purposed here were calling it Python cave) After a few hours we reached what looked like an unpassable obstacle. The formations met the water and the cave looked blocked to further exploration without the use of scuba. Alex cursed that we should have brought the small tanks. After spending some time swimming around and ducking under the formations (we didn't have any rope or masks with us) we were close to giving up as we couldn't find an easy duck under, when I climbed high over the formations and at the roof of the cave found a small gap I could climb down to an half meter dia water filled hole. Ducking down in this water to eye level and I could see a tight gap that could be traversed by swimming along it and enjoying a few duck unders along the way. Coming out the gap brought me out into open passage again - so using this bypass we were able to continue. After 3 hours of caving we reached a large room at the top of which we could see daylight. The room filled with the pungent reek of bat shit and the air filled with the incessant screeching of the many bats we could see flying around the entrance some 60m above us. Me and Dave decided to try to climb to the entrance to see if we could get a gps signal. The climb was made difficult by the slippery bat shit that covered all surfaces. About half way up Dave suddenly screamed SNAKE! I froze realizing he was pointing at/near me. There are Cobras Vipers and Pythons locally. To my great relief it wasn't one of the former (a bite would have been fatal given our remote location) it was in fact a more than 6 foot long Python. I was less than a couple of feet away from it and Dave only saw it as he was about to follow me and step on the rock it was laying on. The rest of the climb out and back involved lots of calling out, whistling, hitting ground with sticks and general noise making in an attempt to ward off any possibly hiding snakes.

Unfortunately no gps signal was obtained so descended back to catch up with Alex and Ben who were pushing ahead. From here on the cave was totally unexplored so we were excited to see what we could find. The passage quickly changed completely to granite boulder filled collapse, possibly a surface collapse.. The settee size boulders filled the whole passage and we ended up squeezing through ridiculously small openings trying to thread our way through the passage. I noted the water flow here was much smaller than in the main cave suggesting there was another passage somewhere we had missed. Some of the boulder looked unstable. A settee size boulder moved lifting Dave (who was sat on one of it about to slide down a small gap) when I stepped on the other end and that was the final warning that the passage was unsafe as well as increasingly unnavigable due to the small squeezes. We turned and headed back out. On the way back I noticed what earlier we had thought to be a bypass to the main passage around a large formation that we thought just filled the middle of the passage. I noted the water flow from one side of this passage was higher than the flow we saw in the lead so I went down to take a look whilst the others continued to head back.. A short crawl and a couple of duck unders brought me back out into clear passage and I hurried back to get the others. We were now pushing the new lead. As with previously there was none of the usual signs that people had been here before. The formations (some of them very fragile) were intact, no foot prints in the mud banks. The passage was very nicely decorated but after a few hunderd meters began to close down again. Looking around I found another possible bypass to the breakdown climbing high above and around the side. Back into the passage the water flow was clearly much higher than the other lead. The ceiling came down slowly but surely to meet the gravelly river bed and soon me and Dave were crawling along one foot high passage with the river flowing over us. Our exploration of the cave ended when the formations reached the gravel river bed - the passage was too tight to continue. I suspect after a big flood the gravel banks may be cleared enough to squeeze under and get a bit further.

It doesnt look like it but Im about 20m off the ground and Im sh1tting it, climbing using the bamboo poles that the birds nest collectors use to collect their crop from high up in the cavern at the top pof the karst tower :-)

Farmers hut near Tham Thong Lang

Upstream enterance of Tham Thong Lang

Alex gearing up and Po taking pics at Tham Thong

Heading out of Tham Thong Lang (sidemount tanks)

Alex 'not bad for his age' Fletcher :-) in Tham Thong Lang

I hike through rubber tree plantation and jungle to get to Tham Thong Lang cave enterance